By DAVID BAUDER and JENNIFER PELTZ (Associated Press)
NEW YORK (AP) — Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said under oath that he believes the 2020 presidential election was free, fair and not stolen, according to court filings released Tuesday in a voting machine company’s defamation lawsuit over Fox News’ coverage of former President Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims.
In sworn questioning in January by lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems, Murdoch was asked, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?”
“Yes,” he replied, according to a transcript.
“The election was not stolen,” he said later.
The transcript and other material released Tuesday expand on earlier disclosures that paint a portrait of behind-the-scenes doubt — or outright dismissals — of Trump’s voting fraud claims, even as the network gave them airtime. In excerpts of Murdoch’s questioning released earlier, he acknowledged that he didn’t stop various Fox News commentators from promoting baseless claims from Trump allies that the election was stolen, even though he could have.
He also acknowledged that some of the network’s hosts — Lou Dobbs, Maria Bartiromo, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity — at times endorsed the false claims.
Dominion is suing Fox News for $1.6 billion, saying the network crippled the company’s business by broadcasting false claims from Trump’s lawyers that Dominion had changed votes in the 2020 election.
Fox says Dominion is inventing its claims of lost business and has cherry-picked and misrepresented remarks by Fox hosts and leaders to paint a picture of a company that threw truth aside to keep its audience.
“Dominion has been caught red-handed using more distortions and misinformation in their PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on free speech and freedom of the press,” the company said in a statement Tuesday, complaining that “to twist and even misattribute quotes to the highest levels of our company is truly beyond the pale.”
Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the outcome of the 2020 election. Nor did they uncover any credible evidence that the vote was tainted. Trump’s allegations of fraud also have been roundly rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he had appointed.
Under questioning, Murdoch said he doubted any massive fraud had occurred and said then-Attorney General William Barr’s statement on Dec. 1, 2020, that there was no significant voter fraud “just closed it for me.”
Murdoch even …read more
Source:: The Denver Post – News